Algonquin Indian Tales

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

The Children Carried Off by the Indians—The Feast in the Wigwam—Souwanas, the Story-teller—Nanahboozhoo, the Indian Myth—How the Wolves Stole His Dinner, and Why the Birch Tree Bark is Scarred—Why the Raccoon has Rings on His Tail.

Without even knocking at the door there noiselessly entered our northern home two large, unhandsome Indians. They paid not the slightest attention to the grown-up palefaces present, but in their ghostly way marched across the room to the corner where the two little children were playing on the floor. Quickly but gently picking them up they swung them to their shoulders, and then, without a word of salutation or even a glance at the parents, they noiselessly passed out of that narrow door and disappeared in the virgin forest. They were pagan Saulteaux, by name Souwanas and Jakoos.

The Indian names by which these two children were called by the natives were "Sagastaookemou," which means the "Sunrise Gentleman," and "Minnehaha," "Laughing Waters."

To the wigwam of Souwanas, "South Wind," these children were being carried. They had no fear of these big Indians, though the boy was only six years old, and his little sister but four. They had learned to look with laughing eyes even into the fiercest and ugliest of these red faces and had made them their friends.

So even now, while being carried away among the dense trees, they merrily laughed and shouted to each other. The bright patches of sunshine on the ground, the singing birds, and the few brilliant-hued summer flowers, brought forth their exclamations of delight, while all the time the grave, silent Indians hurried them on deeper and deeper into the forest. Yet carefully they guarded their precious loads, and as the antlered deer in passing through the thick woods and under the low branches never strike trunk or bough, so these sons of the forest glided swiftly on without allowing any hurt to come to the children of the paleface, even if at times the faint trail led them over slippery rocks and under low intertwining branches.

The wigwam of Souwanas was pitched in a beautiful spot at the edge of the great forest near the sandy, rocky eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg. This great lake is well called The Sea, which is the meaning of its Indian name. It is about as long as Lakes Ontario and Erie combined and in some places is eighty miles wide.

At the entrance of the wigwam, which was made of a couple of tanned reindeerskins, the children were carefully lifted down from the men's shoulders and then taken into this Indian abode. Coming in suddenly from the bright sunshine it was some time before they could see distinctly. The door flap of deerskin had dropped like a curtain behind them. All the light there was came in through the hole in the top, where the poles of the wigwam crossed each other. Presently, however, they were able to see a circle of Indian children gathered around a small fire that smoldered on the ground in the center of the tent. It was now in the pleasant summer time, but the fire was needed for something else than warmth, as the little Sagastao and Minnehaha discovered before long....